March 13, 2008
There are days�When I just remember and simply love. I tell a tale and spin a memory about the room like a solo dancer, so close to the ideal partner that I can almost feel the trepidation of his touch and the light brush of his unkempt hair in my face. Carried away with the recollection of this passionate dance, I�ll feel a little less alone.
I�ll feel� alive.
Those were the days when we could make the walk across a room and intimately recall the feeling of every step that closed the distance. The moment when our hands were wiped away of that heaviness and lifted with a new deliberateness toward the figure standing before us. We held onto the shadows for sanctuary, how they fell upon the curves of our faces or disappeared the slight shaking of our legs, but there was no hiding the unblinking light held deep within our eyes. We never looked away, we never turned our heads or covered our faces, as though we feared that in that act we would somehow lose the intensity of our truth.
We saw each other beyond our expressions, we felt each other beyond our skin, we knew each other beyond our boundaries and above our resolutions. The captivation of our existence was an addiction � perhaps we never knew just when to quit.
There were days when the disappointment dripped from walls in which we stood. For all the world he was not sure what he should do and I watched as his emotions crumpled his heart like a piece of used paper. My inability to strip him of his burdens, to cure him of his questions, to calm the darkness which crept into his senses grew evident and there I was; drowning in helplessness.
It was never my decision to make.
There are days�
When I cannot contain the anger and I simply sink. When I cannot dissuade the questions from returning in all their fury, when I have no recourse or handy explanation, when the world won�t fit together no matter how many hours I spend scrutinizing all the pieces.
I fold the pictures carefully into a file � the ones he would not place upon his wall. I struggled to hear the voices of his loved ones who never had luxury of another face to forget. I see the temporariness of it all � of me.
The filler. The inconvenient truth. The imposing passion. The side job. The other thought. The �for now.� The mistake. The vice. The ghost.
Me.
Skipping idly over those stepping stones of love and life to something new � a different shore entirely � while I�m left blinking against the reflection in the water.
Perhaps a sob story better left untold but all I can say in my own defense is that I simply had nothing else in mind. I did not make other plans or picture other places. I saw no brighter skies, no purer feelings, no deeper meanings. There weren�t any patches of greener grass to behold. There wasn�t anything before you and certainly nothing could compare beyond�
Those days.